Day 3 No Scrolling: Not So Simple

Experiment Begins To Fail--There Is A Deeper Problem. Where Did They Put The World?

Where is everybody?

That’s the question we all want to call out loudly, but to do so would rupture the queasy silence, and in any case, we know there is no answer.

Even if some people manage to “see” some people sometimes, it’s not the same as when that was the only way things were. Now “seeing” people is an affront to the culture, in which Tweets, or content, or articles, or texts, are seen, in other words, people’s avatars sometimes see each other, sometimes interact.

I was so hopeful, but then—

I didn’t stay strict, and now I’m back in the dilemma: I scrolled, thinking I wasn’t (scrolling) but I was. Just a few minutes…it all seemed so urgent. And it was.

It’s not scrolling per se that is the battle—it’s the entire realm of the electronic world.

Within The Context Of No Context by George W.S. Trow (New Yorker, 1980) really is a prophetic masterpiece—possibly the only truly important event in the history of the medium of the magazine. I used to write about it so breathlessly. Trow described what we are all feeling now, decades before social media, or “scrolling.” He was talking about a shattering attack on locality, (place) that defies description, it’s so profound.

Who could be that evil as to invent this thing?

My sister Bibi once told me of an article describing a small village in the Middle East (many years ago) that was brought to ruin when they got a telephone. It unspooled generations of a well woven fabric—the telephone fragmented them. I don’t remember the details. The village died.

Some 10 years ago, or more, I began to see babies and young children in strollers in New York seeking their mother’s eyes, in vain. The mothers were looking at their phones, pushing the strollers. A little boy on the #1 train got so frustrated at not getting his parents’ attention, he threw a toy car on the floor from his stoller. His mother, eyes on phone, picked it up and handed it back to him. He threw it again harder. She handed it back again. He looked at them both, his parents, totally engrossed in their phones, and threw it a third time, really hard. Now the father sprang up, grabbed the boy’s arm, and started screaming at him, as the boy cried. At least he’d made contact. At no point did they get it: He wanted them to look at him.

You can stop scrolling, and experience peace, and focus. But you’ll be not scrolling in an anxious vacuum. The put all of “life” into the casino. You don’t have to enter the casino—but all forms of “contact” are inside its walls. That’s the dilemma. Outside the Matrix, you are alone. Inside the Matrix, you are alone but producing thoughts, observations, which are the consolation prize for genuine contact. Flushed away in seconds.

George W. S Trow, 1980, The New Yorker:

Sleep, now.

Tomorrow I will try again.